LITMIR.BIZ

      XXIX

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      "GOD," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans solemnly, yet in tones that reminded Louis of a showman exhibiting the strange peculiarities of his charge—" God is not mocked. There is such a thing as flying in the face of Providence, and that is what Zella has done in my opinion."

      "Then," said Louis, with unwonted irritability, "I do not agree with your opinion, Marianne. Zella did not care for Stephen Pontisbury, and very sensibly told him so, instead of foolishly drifting into an engagement that would have eventually been broken."

      "And why should it have been broken, pray? He was very much in love with Zella, and told me himself, with tears in his eyes, that she had been his ideal, and he could never care for anyone else again in the same way. It is a fearful responsibility for Zella; one does not know where disillusion and despair may drive a young man."

      "He had only known her ten days, after all, Marianne. His disillusion and despair cannot be so very profound."

      "Louis, you do not know what this means to a nature like his. He told me himself that after this he could never believe in a woman again. And when, as the mother of a son myself, I could not help asking him where he was going, and what he was going to do, what do you think he replied?"

      Louis thought for a moment, and then said:

      "I should think he flung himself out of the room, and said 'To Hell!' and slammed the door after him."

      Mrs. Lloyd-Evans looked rather disconcerted. "I do not know why you should say that. As a matter of fact, he said, 'I am going to the Devil, for all I care.' One knows very well he would not have used such an expression to a lady, but that he hardly knew what he was saying. My heart aches for him, and I have no patience with Zella, throwing away such a chance."

      "She would not have been happy with him."

      "How could she have been anything but happy with a good man, who loved her with all his heart, and who could have given her every material advantage as well? She has no heart, or she could not have played fast and loose with him as she did."

      Louis groaned.

      "I dare say I've not looked after her properly. She is only a child, Marianne, and I let her alone, thinking it a boy and girl affair which would have adjusted itself. In my day, if a young man wished to ask a young lady in marriage, he would have approached her father and demanded a definite permission to pay his addresses to her."

      "That is the terrible system of mariage de convenance, Louis, though, as I always say, inconvenance would be the better word, since we all know that the divorce court in France is made up of unhappily married couples," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, apparently under the impression that the Divorce Courts of other nations existed only for the exhibition of conjugal felicity. "It would have been terrible to expose poor little Zella, badly though she has behaved, to anything of that sort, and one can only be thankful that things are as they are in this country. But all this will do her no good, Louis, mark my words. A girl cannot lead a young man on and on as she did, and then suddenly turn round and refuse him, without getting herself talked about."

      "I do not see who is to do the talking in this case. Pontisbury will naturally keep it to himself, and poor little Zella is too miserable ever to wish the affair mentioned again. Nobody else can say anything, since nobody else has been told."

      "People see things without being told, Louis. Alison St. Craye is quite sharp in her own way, and is probably delighted at having the chance of telling a long story. And then there's that very fishy Frenchman who dangles about after her. The only person who noticed nothing is poor James, who really wouldn't have mattered, since he is a near relation, and naturally wouldn't have cared to spread the story. But then, as I always say, Jimmy goes about with his head in the clouds." Zella came into the room.

      She was pale, and her eyes had dark circles round them from crying. Stephen's startled, almost incredulous reproaches when she had refused to marry him, finally his anger, had shaken her even while the conviction grew that marriage with him would have been an impossibility. Even Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's indignant amazement and argumentative disapproval had added incredibly to her despairing sense of utter failure and misery.

      Louis had not reproached her, but neither had he commended her, and Zella craved passionately for someone to restore her shattered self-esteem.

      Looking ahead with the infinitely far-seeing gaze of youth, life seemed to her unutterably dreary, bereft of the excitement which had coloured the horizon for so short a while, and left her blankly conscious of having failed to find reality on the very threshold of adventure.

      Mrs. Lloyd-Evans looked at her with an expression of gloomy commiseration.

      "One does not know what to say to you, my poor child!" she untruly observed, "but remember that Aunt Marianne is always there. If you would like to come and stay quietly at Boscombe until all this has blown over, you have only to say so. Uncle Henry and I are always ready for you, as you know, and we shall be quite alone."

      Zella wondered miserably why she should be treated as though only seclusion could henceforth be her portion.

      "Thank you, Aunt Marianne," she said apathetically; "I came in to tell you that the carriage is round."

      Louis rose and went into the hall.

      "Well, dear," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, adjusting her veil before the glass, "one wishes the visit had had a happier ending, but what's done cannot be undone. When you are older, I am afraid you will look back upon this time with pain and shame, and perhaps with bitter regret; but, as I always say, one learns by experience, and there is a silver lining to every cloud. Don't begin to cry again, my dear child. You have made poor papa very unhappy already, and it is selfish and cowardly to go on crying when it is too late to alter anything."

      Zella was crying again, in a dreary, hopeless way. Her aunt kissed her with reserve.

      "You had better not come into the hall, dear; one doesn't want the servants to see."

      "Marianne!"

      Henry Lloyd-Evans hovered uneasily at the drawing-room door, which he had just opened.

      "Yes, dear; there is plenty of time. I am just saying my little good-bye to Zella," called out his wife with a sudden access of spurious cheerfulness designed to deceive the servants who might possibly be outside the door.

      "Oh," said Zella, with an uncontrollable outburst of self-pity, "I am so miserable."

      "Yes,

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